when the world is cracking (the image splits)
by tonberrys
Summary: In the wake of the Muggle-born Registration Commission, Justin Finch-Fletchley chooses not to return to Hogwarts, but separate is not always safe.


This one-shot was written for Round 11 (Who's Afraid of the Dark?) of the 2018 Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Season 6. I'm writing as a Chaser (3rd Position) for the Wimbourne Wasps.

Position Prompt: American Horror Story (loosely inspired by the Cult season - with Voldemort in charge, bolder prejudice/open cult-like behavior)  
Optional Chaser Prompt #1: (object) Broken mirror  
Optional Chaser Prompt #2: (word) Pattern  
Optional Chaser Prompt #3: (word) Fatal

I'm also a Slytherin at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments). This was written for Assignment #6, Psychology: Influential Psychological Experiments in History, Task #1, A Class Divided \- Write about a Muggleborn facing prejudice.

Additional prompts listed in the end notes.

* * *

 **when the world is cracking (the image splits)**

* * *

"Are you registered yet, Mudblood?"

The taunt pelted against the back of Justin's head like the sharp and sudden sting of a rock. He could hear the sneer in Pansy Parkinson's voice, not unlike nails on a chalkboard, but she was fishing for a reaction. He knew she was.

Slipping in front of him to block the entrance to Flourish and Blotts, Parkinson made a point to dramatically avoid his reaching hand while also arranging herself to be completely in the way.

"Move, Parkinson," Justin mustered sourly. Going into their seventh year of schooling, the same pattern held strong. Evidently, his sneering classmate had not been raised with the same manners instilled in himself, but clipped tones did nothing to deter her bad attitude. If he had to guess, more of her nasty friends were probably in the area, too. Maybe Malfoy was even in the vicinity; she seemed to show off more than ever when he was, thought she rarely needed an excuse.

"I wouldn't bother buying your books this year if I were you. Your kind don't belong at Hogwarts," she said, crossing her arms. "Finally, someone is doing something about it."

The sudden press of a hand on his back might have startled Justin out of his skin, were he not already steeling himself against her tone, but a glimpse of brown hair caught his eye. Immediately, Justin relaxed. Ernie had sidled up beside him.

"Shove off." Ernie's tone was cold as he and Parkinson locked eyes.

"Make me," she challenged with a prim lift of her chin. "Blood traitors will meet a bad end, too, if they can't let go of their pets."

Justin scowled thinly, but Ernie didn't miss a beat: "If anyone is subhuman around here, it's you, not Justin."

"Ignore it if makes you feel better." With a shrug, she leveled a look at them both. "They're your lives. Take fatal chances with them, by all means."

"I'm not scared of you," Justin said flatly.

"Maybe not," Parkinson said, "but things are changing. You _should_ be scared of that."

Justin supposed his face must have betrayed the jolt in his chest because her mouth twisted into a smirk. However, whatever Parkinson had been intending to say next was cut off:

"Sorry I'm late." When Justin twisted around to look, Hannah was sweeping her loose blonde hair behind her shoulder. Though she appeared cheerful enough, he could see the exact moment Hannah noticed the Slytherin blockade; subtly, her nose crinkled.

"How's your Mudblood mother, Abbott?" Parkinson's voice was syrupy now, but Hannah's face had turned to stone. "Oh, that's right… I suppose all of this doesn't affect her, seeing as she's dead."

"Do you people even listen to yourselves?" Justin cut in with a sickening rush of anger in his stomach. "You are talking about a person—about someone's mother. Are you really that callous? What if something were to happen to your own?"

The muscles in Parkinson's face tightened. "I don't remember asking you." Something unreadable flashed behind her eyes as she looked between them, scoffed, and lifted her chin to push past. "I've wasted enough time here."

Justin was not sad to see her go, nor were Ernie or Hannah, though the unsettled air remained in her wake. Her words rang with the same empty threats she had delighted in for the previous six years, but something about them felt more charged. Hogwarts had been announced as compulsory for the first time, starting this year, but as much as Justin hated to acknowledge it, that only made Parkinson's assertion that he would not make it to the castle feel even more ominous—not less.

If all students were required to show up, maybe it was easier to make certain ones disappear.

Huddled together at lunch—joined by Susan, when their shopping came to a close—Justin gathered that his friends had been experiencing similar reservations.

"I don't condone the idea of letting the monsters feel like they've won, but it's not looking good out there, Justin." Ernie's frown had reached his eyes, a sadder shade of blue than normal, and that was almost _more_ unnerving than Parkin's fading threats.

"I hate to say it, but I think he's right." Susan's auburn fringe was nearly long enough to cover the pinch of her brow, but the twist of her mouth was all too apparent. "The Ministry is a mess. The registration… You know not to do it, right? Nothing good could possibly come of a list like that."

Justin nodded. "I know."

"I got this for you," Ernie said suddenly, pulling out a mirror and handing it over.

Picking it up, Justin noticed right away that it was not a freckled face and a head of strawberry blonde curls that stared back at him, but rather what looked to be the shadowed contents of a bag. For a confused moment, Justin blinked at it, but Ernie did not let the confusion linger for long.

"It's a two-way mirror. I bought a pair for us." To demonstrate, Ernie pulled a second mirror out of his bag, and when Ernie when he looked into it, Justin could see his friend's face appear in his own. "I don't think Hogwarts is going to be safe for you this year, but this way, we can stay in contact."

For a fleeting moment, Justin wanted to be offended that he should have to stay home while the rest of them went to finish their final year, but just as quickly as the emotion had risen in his throat, it had settled glumly again.

It was easy enough to say what he shouldn't do; it was harder to say what he was supposed to do instead.

* * *

A month had passed since Justin had stubbornly bought textbooks he might never be instructed on—a month that passed too slowly and not slowly enough. Three times, Justin had spoken with Ernie through the mirrors, though it had now only been a week since his friends had left for their seventh year. By Ernie's report, Death Eaters ran the school now: Professor Snape, boldly bearing his unsurprising but nonetheless true colours, along with 'the Carrows,' who were already tormenting anyone who gave resistance to the new Dark Arts curriculum.

Apparently, no Muggle-borns had arrived at the school; expected, but not particularly comforting. It made Justin sick, wondering how many of them had been forced to avoid the school, and how many others had tried to get on the train, that day.

As he reached the bottom of the staircase and rounded towards the dining room, he was met with the image of his mother sitting at the table with dinner set out for the three of them, though his father wasn't home yet.

"Justin." His mother's voice had that concerned but exacting tone it got when she was impatient for him to explain himself. "Do you know when you will be able to go back to school?"

In fairness to his mother, he had not explained himself very well when the first of September had rolled around, but he did not know a good way to explain to them that the magical world was trying to systematically catalogue and whisk away people like him in a way that would sound way too much like Nazi Germany.

'You should have just gone to Eton,' she would say, and his father would too.

For once, they would probably be right about that, but Eton didn't have magic, and it didn't have Ernie. Eton didn't have Hannah, either, or Susan, nor did it have the rest of Dumbledore's Army, who were pulling together within the walls of Hogwarts to hold a wave of psychopaths at bay until someone could do something about _anything_ , really. It would probably be Harry, in the end. Typically, it was.

"Justin?" his mother repeated. Her eyebrows were lifted now, meaning he should probably respond.

"Not yet," he answered, which wasn't a lie, though he still felt bad about it. "But I have all of my books, and I'm studying at home for now so that I won't get too behind."

"You should invite Ernie over to study with you. He's one of your friends, right? He must be disappointed by the delay, too."

It was a well-meaning suggestion, but Justin felt it like a punch to the gut. "He's—He's not able to right now," Justin said lamely, unable to even think of a good lie.

His mother's face changed. "You didn't have some sort of falling out, did you? If that's why you're avoiding going back to school—"

"It's not!" Justin immediately felt bad about raising his voice, and the sharp look on his mother's face only made it worse. "It's not," he corrected in a calmer tone.

"I want to believe you." His mother watched him with a frown.

"I want you to believe me too," he said, face pinching a little.

Immediately, his mother sighed and shook her head, gesturing towards the seat next to her. "Sit down. Your dinner will get cold."

* * *

Several weeks had passed before the war at last touched the Finch-Fletchleys. Ignoring the Muggle-born Registration Commission had started to feel like avoidance enough as time passed; Muggle-borns weren't as well-documented compared to magical families, so without handing themselves in, Justin wondered if maybe it would be easier to hole away from the situation altogether.

"JUSTIN!"

The scream had jabbed through the night like a knife to the chest, and it was in that horrifying moment that Justin concluded that the Ministry must not have needed the registration to find them, after all.

Grabbing his wand, Justin slung his emergency satchel over his shoulder and tore down the hallway, heart thundering in his chest. His mother was alone in there—Justin's father had been out of town on business for a week, now—but even if she hadn't been alone, two Muggles had no more hope against a Death Eater than one did.

'I should have told them!' his mind screamed at him as he flung open the door to his parents' bedroom. Hunched over her vanity, his mother's nightgown was stained with what looked eerily like blood, and though he stared for several startled seconds, she did not moved at all. Flicking his eyes up, he saw that her mirror looked to be shattered on impact; the center cracks were lined with red.

Standing in the middle of the room was a grungy-looking man. He didn't have a hooded cloak or a telltale mask on his face, but the ripped black robes he wore still looked menacing. Probably not a Death Eater, in light of that, but when he turned his wand on Justin, a reflexive panic brought forth a spell they had practiced extensively with the D.A.:

" _Expelliarmus_!"

The man's wand flew from his hand and whacked against the wall with a soft thunk, but the startled expression lasted no more than a second before he was lunging for it again. Justin wanted to check on his mother, to confirm that the smash had not been as fatal as it looked, but whoever this wizard was, he did not seem like the sort of hostile who would grant that sort of decency. Bolting out the door, Justin rounded the corner skip down the staircase in a flurried hustle. Several steps from the bottom, one shoe caught on the other, and he landed on the hardwood floor with a crash, his bag crushing under his chest but doing little to break his fall. He felt like his bones were still vibrating as he pushed himself up again and kept running towards the front door, though the narrow miss of what might been a blasting curse connecting with the floor suggested that the assailant was close behind.

Bursting out the front door and slamming it behind himself again, he had almost reached the line of trees stretched alongside his house when he heard what must have been the door blasting open behind him. Tumbling into the brush, Justin tried not to breathe and silently hoped that the man had not seen him. Swallowing the thundering fear in his throat, Justin clenched his eyes closed and tried to calm his mind enough to focus on an escape. Immediately, Ernie's room flashed in his mind's eye, still crystal clear from when Justin had visited earlier that summer. The Macmillans' home blocked Apparition, but he could remember the front of the house almost as well. Forcing his mind to block out the footsteps thudding towards him and focus on nothing but that friendly front doorstep, Justin soon felt a jolting tug in his stomach, and he disappeared with a crack.

On the front steps of the Macmillan household, Justin landed in an ungraceful heap. For a thundering minute, Justin just tried to calm the panic beating against his skull. He had not yet decided if he was going to knock on the door in some attempt to wake them up when Ernie's mother opened the door with a stricken face.

"Come in," she said, already shuffling him inside and shutting the door before Justin had the chance to say anything at all. The distress in her face suggested she had a pretty good idea of what was happening, but that probably shouldn't have surprised him. Justin hadn't been taking the _Prophet_ to avoid a line of owls to his house, but he could not have been the first. Trying to settle his nerves, he thought to himself that Ernie's mother had a comforting face, fear aside—like Ernie's, with her blue eyes and dark hair. "I will be right back," she said, then disappeared into another room, possibly to fill in Ernie's father.

Collapsing on the front room sofa, Justin opened his bag to look inside. His heart seized when he saw that the two-way mirror had broken, lined with several large cracks—black, each of them, but for a flash, all Justin could imagine was dried blood. Immediately he thought of his mother hunched over the vanity at home and steeled himself against being sick all over Mrs. Macmillan's floral-patterned sofa.

Ernie was on the other side of that mirror, but Justin couldn't talk right now, couldn't even stop his head from spinning.

'Things are changing,' Parkinson had said. The world would never feel the same.

* * *

 **Additional Author's Notes**

* * *

 **Applicable Hogwarts Prompts:**

Assignment #6, Psychology: Influential Psychological Experiments in History, Task #1, A Class Divided \- Write about a Muggleborn facing prejudice.  
Insane House Challenge \- 515. (action) Falling  
365 Day Challenge \- 103. (location) Flourish & Blotts  
Gris-Gris Bags \- (setting) Flourish & Blotts  
Autumn Funfair, Apple Bobbing, Actions \- 4. (action) Running  
Writing Club, Character Appreciation, Lucius Malfoy \- 29. (action) Sneering  
Writing Club, Disney Challenge, Characters, Sally \- 2. Write about someone doubting a loved one  
Writing Club, Cookie's Crafty Corner, Cereal Killer \- 5. Write about having to explain yourself  
Writing Club, Showtime, Devil's Carnival 1&2, Prick! Goes the Scorpion's Tale \- 8. (color) Black  
Writing Club, Count Your Buttons, Words \- 5. (word) Fear  
Writing Club, Lyric Alley, "Creep" \- 18. When I'm not around  
Writing Club, Em's Emporium, Wild Child \- (emotion) Bitter  
Writing Club, Film Festival, Scary Movie \- 4. (plot point) Falling over while being chased, 10. (object) Nightgown  
Seasonal Autumn Challenges, Days of the Year, World Vegetarian Day \- Write about someone who chooses not to do something  
Seasonal Autumn Challenges, Autumn Prompts \- (word) Break  
Seasonal Autumn Challenges, Flowers, Pansy \- (character) Pansy Parkinson  
Seasonal Autumn Challenges, Air Element, Air Prompts \- (word) Breathe  
Seasonal Autumn Challenges, Autumn Astronomy Prompts, Ursids Meteor Shower \- (theme) Murder

Word Count \- 2,403


End file.
